The anomaly here is the NVIDIA Gtx460 SMOKES the 7770 on everything, in every test, and costs 33% less.I see the crazed fan base cannot bring themselves to say it.I'll say it - 19 pages unsaid, over a long time.THE NVIDIA GTX460 SMOKES THIS CARD RO DEATH, AND THERE'S MORE OF THOSE ON NEWEGG FOR LESS MONEY THAN THE 7770.Reply

The reason why 7770 costs a bit is because its new technology, power consumption goes down quite a bit. Compare the card to same power consumption of new generation card maybe a 7870 and the 7870 will smoke the gtx 460.

you seriously need to stop posting. everything you post comes off as rabid nvidia fanatic, because you evidently are one, and you seem to camp outside these benchmarks to say the same thing everytime!! "this thing SMOKES~~~~!! the 7770!!! thats all i look at are the frame rates!!! i dont take anything else into consideration cause im an nvidia superfan"Reply

This 7k series needs some www.verdetrol.com--LOL - How low can you go amd ?Seems like more firings and cullings are in the works - or perhaps they already dragged the cat in and are now stuck with perverts.Reply

Me too, the 6850 was worse than the 5850, so I'd expected it to be easily beaten by this generation's 770. Then again, the 6770 was just a 5770, so I suppose I should've learned that the mid-range is barely moving.Reply

Right, and it's a long time that nVidiai stopped producing overpriced "you can fry pancackes with these" GPUs and even hold performance crown? Oh, it's still producing them and AMD still hold performance crown? What a pity.

Oh, but AMD went nVidia route with "confuse consumer more" naming scheme? How shameless, do they pay royalties for this to nVidia, the inventor of this rubbish?Reply

AMD has been doing the name bait and switch just as long as Nvidia but since your such a fan boy apparently you haven't noticed. It is obvious from your overheated GPU remarks that you are stuck on some ancient review of a past Nvidia product. And again, AMD has done the same, also in the past, 2900XT anyone?Reply

The GTX 590 still holds the single card crown.The very strange situation that has occurred is amd holding the single core card crown with 7970, finally passing the 580 after a year or closer to two and I don't remember how long. This single core crown is gone already gone with the GTX680 benches leaked a few days early. So amd finally did hold a crown for once in a very long time, for a very short time, 2.5 months or so....with most of that time in very weak or absent stock on retail shelves.

You realize you're kinda the laughing stock of anandtech right? You wait with baited breath for every post remotely including AMD somewhere in the article to give you the opportunity to suck off nvidia and intel. I literally think you might need psychiatric help with that raging superiority complex, then again I've always thought there should be specially designed concentration camps for people like you who never grew out of acting like a blow-hard highschool kid.

Oh well, down to business.

Two 7970's (And I mean two 7970's, NOT a 7990) perform better than one Titan, EVERY benchmark has shown it, you can not deny this. And I already know what you're doing to say "BUT THAT'S 2 CARDS VS. 1, NOT FAIR ;[" But see, this is the main point that proves you're a major fucking moron. That.does.not.matter.at.all.

The the Titan is 1000$.Two 7970's are 800$.

And while yes, it's impressive that a single card can hold it's own against two, it doesn't matter, who is going to spend 200$ more for LESS performance? I'm sure you'll also say "you're just an AMD fanboy." Wrong, I just don't like to waste my money. And I really, really, don't like you.

I feel like reviewers were blinded by performance with the 7970/7950 cards. They offer the same lack of competitive pricing as these lower end cards. The 7950 can be compared directly (in price and performance) to the Nvidia GTX 580, a card that was available a year ago.

I'm still rocking a pair of 4870s that set me back ~$400 a few years back. To get a substantial performance upgrade, I'd have to spend $450 on a 7950 today. Where is the value in that? Yes, power consumption and features are important but are tertiary to raw performance in almost every user scenario when it comes to gaming.

To say the least, the lack of competitive pricing between nvidia and amd currently smells a little fishy.....it wouldn't be the first time there was price fixing in the graphics card industry.Reply

I'm convinced that the pricing for 4870s in late 2008/early 2009 was the sweet point to buy. Yes, power consumption sucks, but other than that, a card that cost me $160 then, is pretty competitive with a card that costs $120 today. I think we may have just lucked out with the 4870s, and may need to wait until at least Kepler, if not 8XXX to upgrade.Reply

Just be careful not to set expectations on the 4870's pricing for 2 reasons:

1) 4870 pricing was a mistake imo. AMD will say it was a calculated one in fluff pieces like the RV770 story and it was true in some degree that AMD needed to recover mindshare/marketshare and consumer confidence after the R600 debacle and a weak performing RV670. Still, when you set your single-GPU flagship at $300 and your second SKU at $200, there's not much room to go down on pricing.

2) Late 2008 early 2009 was the height of the recession. Wall Street, Real Estate, Auto Industry, all that. Nvidia and AMD were feeling it too and got involved in a highly publicized price war. That's why you saw "new" high-end performance parts like the 4890 and GTX 275 launching for $230-$250 that occupy the $350+ market today, with cards like the 4870 and GTX 260c216 selling at tremendous value for $150 or less.

Its obvious AMD is doing its best to correct their 4870 price mistake over the last few years, but with the overall performance of Southern Islands stack, the 7-series was the wrong time to do it. They should've just stuck to their old pricing scheme or at worst, matched Nvidia's pricing ($500, $380) with their Tahiti parts. Then you might see the rest of the stack priced reasonably.Reply

Maybe we can see 4870's with maximum performance/die size in mind pricing failure because it was performing close to the big die from Nvidia gtx2xx. Or maybe we can see the ''double performance from last gen'' tactic from Nvidia a fail when it means building a super big die with low performance/size ratio just to get that double performance motto... It was all a question of ''goal to attain'' from each company. One goal paid off more than the other that time.

From an Nvidia's fanboy perception, the first will be true and the second unthinkable. From an ATI fanboy, the first will make no sense and the second will suit them well. From someone with no choosen side, both can be true.

But these 7770 and 7750 here, makes no sense, such small die with such performance for that price.....Reply

I know, I bought a 5850 before the MSRP hike for around $279 + VAT in 2009 and I just checked, it clearly beats a 7770 so a >$159 value today, maybe close to the $200 card being launched in March. The 6xxxx series I thought was just because they had to scrap the 34nm process and deliver essentially a refined 5xxx series, but now they're on 28nm and there's not much bang for the buck for those of us that already have a gaming card from the 4/5xxxx series. I hope this is just a temporary situation until nVidia gets their Kepler out, or I might just sit out another generation...Reply

It seriously seems that the 4850/4870 was an incredible purchase. In 2009, you could get a 4850 for $99 dollars. And it STILL holds up to the top range cards.

I mean we all know that Nvidia and AMD are playing the profit game 10 times harder than the performance game in this sector, simply because games can't press the limits of the hardware, but it's still impressive.Reply

First a 4850 for $170, Second a 4870 for $199 Third a 4870 1G for $229 and lastly a 4830 for 140.. While I live in Canada I don't think prices ever came that low unless you got one helluva good deal.. $99 pricing for the 4850 wasn't the norm even late in its production run.Reply

I got mine real chaep at launch! BestBuy mispriced them. Still, not too much later there were good deals again and I got one for my daughter's desktop. These cards in CF still hold up well for 1920x1200 gaming. I would like to upgrade to better performance and lower power, but AMD is making that hard dollar-wise.Reply

Indeed. Best Buy had a 25% off all Visiontek cards the week of the 4850 launch, so I got mine at launch for $150. I then caught an amazing deal on a 4870 a few months later ($129 shipped), sold my 4850 for $140. I basically bought both for a net $140.

I've been waiting for a good AMD card, but just haven't seen one. I've been tempted by the 560 Ti or 570, but they're still too expensive for my taste, and don't offer enough of an advantage to spend the cost of a PS3 on upgrading from an already decent GPU.

Yeah, I jumped on that BB/Visiontek HD4850 512MB deal as well. Bought the card about a week before the official launch and at a $50 discount on top of that. Timing was perfect, too, as I had just finished my build, short one video card (borrowed a 3850 from a friend for a few weeks).

I finally upgraded from that card to a 6950 2GB (BIOS modded to 6970) about a month ago - Skyrim was just too much for the 4850 to handle @ 2560x1440. The 6950 2GB is a great card for the price if you're willing to perform the BIOS mod (and don't mind rebate forms).Reply

Exactly! I bought 2 4850's in the UK in 2009 for £65 ($95) each - best GPU purchase I have made in 12 years! I now have a single 6870 that I bought in 2011 for £120- but its not really an upgrade at all. Thought I would wait and get a second one cheaper but now I don't think that will happen

2008-2009 was the sweet spot of a decade for Desktop GPUs. The way things are going with the Desktop (AMD bullsnoozer etc. etc.) I fear that it might have even been the sweet spot of GPU performance for the decade to come as well. I would love to see some massive progress in graphics, but it seems that the all the "suites" care about now days is "smart" this and "smart" that. I can't really blame them either, because until pc programmers get their act together and actually start making apps and games that push what is possible on current hardware I don't see any reason why I need 2X the GPU and CPU compute power every 1-2 years.

Come on guys - we are all waiting for the next "Crysis" - if it doesn't come then it might spell the end of the enthusiast desktop Reply

AMD having a fail product at $160 that couldn't even beat an almost 1.5 year old $150 6870 isn't surprising considering they are also the ones with the cheek to price their FX-8150 at near 2600K prices.Reply

I think that 6GHz memory modules would have taken the HD7770 a long way ahead. The performance boost would have been enough to hit HD6850 performance, or beat it in all cases, and at that point, this card at 159$ would make sense.

Right now, until the price hits about 129$, this doesn't make sense.Reply

I think I've built my last system with an AMD CPU. Intel completely abused their monopoly and decimated AMD's success in the CPU department, and I don't think AMD will have an enthusiast-quality CPU ever again. :(

That said, I think I will still use AMD GPUs for a while yet.

nVidia's Kepler may beat AMD later this year, but AMD actually has an open-source driver developer on staff and routinely publishes hardware documentation. AMD GPUs will probably have better support for Wayland than their nVidia counterparts due to these factors. If you use Linux and want to stay on the cutting edge, then I don't think picking nVidia is particularly wise.Reply

AMD is several years behind NVidia on the compute side...actually they are nowhere as of today. The AMD 7xxx series is so ridiculously priced, it will not get an user base to be attractive for developers. Actually, I am at the point of considering NVidia cards for computing, despite that I hate their heat and power consumption.

AMD had their chance and they blew it.

Besides, we shall see where the AMD ex-VP will go - that company most likely will be the next big player in graphics and high performance computing. Probably Apple.Reply

In my country, company policy dictates you cannot leave your company and work for a competing company if you have valuable R&D knowledge. Thats part of the restraint of trade clause in your contract.

Basically what I'm saying is, AMD's ex-VP will not be able to work in any company with a graphics department for 2 years if the contract is similar to mine. I can't remember now but some CEO was sued for that recently.Reply

What happened there at 1920x1200 for the 6870? 23.2 fps seems a bit off to me. I get a solid 60 just about everywhere (occasional dips to ~50) at 1080.

I am so glad I bought a 6870 ICEQ a month ago. Got the email today that I will be getting my rebate so your point about getting a 6870 for 159 AR is absolutely true. And the ICEQ edition I have is rocking a 1000/1150 oc all day long 32c idle 69c load via furmark 15 min run. Best part is it's much quieter than a reference card.

I go over this a bit in the commentary for that benchmark, but basically the 1GB cards are running out of memory in that benchmark. For reasons I've yet to determine, even though the 7700 series cards still only have 1GB they are handling the situation better than the 6800 and 5700.Reply

first thing that should be pointed out is that i believe that the 7700 series cards that launched today only have a 128 bit memory interface so no one should expect miracles especially at higher resolutions. the memory bandwidth on x700 cards and lower has always held them back a little, where as nvidia for instance on their 550ti uses a 192 bit memory interface. if this card used a higher bandwidth memory it would do better. also the 79xx series from amd upped the bandwidth from the 69xx series from 256 bit to 384 bit which is probably one of the reasons it was so impressive.

well the gtx 460 is starting to disappear and amd discontinued the 6850 and 6870 two months ago so once they are gone they are gone. this is directly from amd. so i think this card fits in nicely and i expect once the 7850 launches that the price of this card will drop. i think that the 7770 almost being as fast as the 6850 isn't all that bad, especially because of how cool it runs and it seems like the factory oc cards close that gap even closer. considering how much power some of these cards took a couple of generations ago it seems like we are making progress. once the 7850 launches, which i believe happens next month, i think it will be the card to get, just as the 6850 was.

so all in all it seems like the 7770 will fit in nicely with a small price drop and and the discontinuation of some of the older amd and nvidia cards that has been happening, let alone taking into account the promotions we might see with rebates on these cards or bundled games etc.

lastly the 7750 seems like it will now be the best card on the market that doesn't require an external power connector and it will come in at only about $10 more than the current champ in that arena. so it looks like a nice card for the casual gamer or someone looking for an htpc card and it looks like the encoding features of the 77xx cards are pretty great.Reply

Like I said in the 7970 and 7950 review comments, the reality of the situation is only going to get worst as AMD reveals the rest of their 7-series product stack.

Ryan I can tell you're doing your best not to be too hard on AMD but there comes a time we need to call a spade a spade. What AMD is doing here in terms of price and performance with the 7-series is easily the worst we've ever seen in the last decade from a new GPU architecture, especially considering they're also on a new process node.

If/when Nvidia pulls an RV770 on AMD, I really hope you and the rest of the media is up to the task the same way they were with the GTX 280. I don't think you were head GPU editor at that time but I'm sure you remember the backlash. Reply

So AMD either went stupid all of the sudden or they just can't produce enough cards yet and priced them to not sell.Either way,this is a mistake and they are only hurting their image (something they can't afford since Nvidia is still the stronger brand).Lets hope Nvidia wants market share and gives us something exciting soon.Reply

There is still a 7800 series set of cards that we have not seen yet. We saw the 7900 cards, and now the 7700 series. The comparisons here are 7700 vs. 6800 series, and that is ONE issue.

Price vs. performance is the primary issue that I can see, and TIME will hopefully bring down the prices to a reasonable level. I also hope/expect that there are reasons for the prices that will be fixed quickly, so will reduce the prices. We shall see, but if NVIDIA is having problems, it may be that AMD is giving NVIDIA a chance to come back, and is saving their next big performance jump for that release.Reply

"Price vs. performance is the primary issue that I can see, and TIME will hopefully bring down the prices to a reasonable level."

But that's exactly the problem, time hasn't brought price down to a reasonable level because we've already had 14+ months of this performance level at the same or better prices. AMD's pricing does nothing to shift the price performance metric and if anything, they are actually falling behind the curve a bit as you can get "old" parts that perform the same or better than these "new" ones at much lower prices.

The 7800 series will only emphasize this point further with similar performance relative to the 6900 series, but at much worst prices. But that's the trickle down effect of pricing a new "high-end" flagship part that's only 15-25% faster than the last-gen at a 10% price hike. There just isn't much value derived as you go further down the ladder.Reply

This is disappointing, although I agree that the 7750 does have a place due to its low power. Let's see what NVIDIA will offer.

The only ray of sunshine is that as always with a new architecture it takes a while for the drivers to take full advantage of the hardware, so it's possible to see performance improvements of tens of percents over time. Let's hope that's the case here.Reply

here is the thing to be honest. if you complain about the price that seems like a fair complaint. however one has to wonder how much it costs amd and nvidia in losses to keep dropping prices to stay competitive. at some point it has to catch up with you. with the losses amd has suffered with bulldozer they have to be smarter with the prices. also until nvidia launches something new they can stay a little heavy handed with the prices unless nvidia forces the issue especially as we see some of the older cards go away and amd has said that the 6xxx series cards are no longer in production and haven't been for months. so right now the pricing seems a little bit off but what about once you can't get a 6850,6870, of gtx 460 ti? it will make more sense then.

finally if you expected a 77xx series card to blow anything out of the water with its limited memory bandwidth of 128 bit memory then frankly you are either not very intelligent or naive. this is a lower mid ranged card that almost beats last gens upper mid range card. that is not bad. this card was never going to blow the roof off and if you thought it could will that just wasn't the best thought process you ever had.Reply

I'm sorry, but you entirely missing the point of the whole concept of the IT industry. Graphic cards are not groceries, where you are lucky if you can still buy them for the same price 18 months later. The desktop market is declining, so there are plenty of computers out there fast enough to run Firefox and Word.

There HAS to be an incentive to buy new parts - and especially now that integrated graphics are fast enough for 1080p and casual games, this HAS to involve a performance gain in some form or another to get people to buy a dedicated graphic card, let alone upgrade from their existing one.

Who is going to buy this card? Seriously, who? A person who is tight on money should look on Ebay, where you get a used 5770/6770 for $60. Everyone else is bettor off buying the 6850 or going to NVidia.

Frankly, you are a bit naive if you think we will applaud AMD for releasing such an underachiever. As it stand now, AMD would have been better off with another round of rebadging (thereby saving money on R&D and freeing up 28nm wavers).

integrated graphics aren't good enough to run most games. if by casual games you mean angry birds then i guess i would agree with that.

most gpu's come out higher in price initially then we expect or want especially when newer cards come out while the other vendor, in this case nvidia, is a ways away from releasing there next gen cards. sure we can bash this card but to do so we have to assume nvidia is going to blow amd out of the water. sure amd has been rebranding their cards the last two cycles but nvidia is more guilty of that then anyone. so as the current market stands the price is a little high. but lets be honest it is only looking that way because cards like the 6850 are still available, which won't be the case in the very near future.

i guess if you want to buy a used gpu off of ebay with no warranty then someone can do that and if it craps out in a month then they can deal with that as well. and if someone is tight on money and only going to spend $60 then i doubt they are on a site like this and care about benchmarks let alone at 1080p etc.

the gtx 460 is becoming harder and harder to find and the gtx 560 is over $200 so i don't see a huge issue. i expect the cards to lower in price next month when the 7850 launches and the 7770 will settle down into a more comfortable range. if you buy a gpu or cpu day one you will always pay more typically then a couple of months later.

i don't think amd should be applauded but i think people need to be realistic. when nvidia released the 550 ti it didn't even get close to the gtx 460 ti, yet that is the exact thing amd is getting bashed for. the 550 ti competes with the 6770 and 6790, while the 6850 was trying to get closer to competing with the gtx 560 and gtx 460. like i said the 550 ti didn't perform better than the gtx 460, not even close, yet you expect amd to release a card that would typically compete against a card like the 550 ti (in its respected generation, being the next nvidia card that would replace the 550 ti) and you expect it to compete at a higher class than it is released. sure the price isn't perfect but you are expecting a civic released to compete with a corolla to actually compete with bmw 1 series. Reply

Thanks for the honest review. AMD deserves to be dragged through the coals for trying to sell us something that costs more and performs worse than a two-year-old card. This constitutes an epic failure in the world of consumer electronics. The more you stress it, the more it feels like you're an advocate of the consumer and not the greedy corporate suits.Reply

On VCE and the Test page, "7700 series launch is a bit more unsettling. These are cards that are going to be paired with slower GPUs, where having a high speed H.264 encoder is going to be all the more important."

I think it's pretty obvious that AMD is milking what they can while the buzz of the architecture and die size is fresh - primary opponent being absent in their next series release and all. In a month it'll be a different story. Prices will have settled in to where they belong after all the manufacturer's have their versions readily available. I don't really see how this is a big deal. Has any card released been placed appropriately immediately at debut?Reply

I would like something a bit newer though, that can handle new games in full HD.

And now I have witnessed the launch of 5750/70, 6750/70 and now 7750/70. The 5770 being "the peoples champ" for quite a while, as my 4770 could and would have been in its time, if it wasn´t for availability problems. (Probably created by AMD on purpose, realizing, that the card was to cheap.)

But as far as I can read everywhere, the 6770 is simply another 5770. And the 5770 wouldn´t really give me a significant improvement over my 4770. Never mind DX11 and Eyefinity and all that jazz.

SO. Where should I go for a difference I can feel and see right away? 6870? Prices doesn´t give ANY clue anymore, as Anandtech pointed out with this - and previous articles.

I look at Tom´s "Best card for the money..." round-ups, but I don´t get much wiser.

Good point. One thing I think people forget is that smaller processing technologies will yield either better performance at the same power, or reduced consumption at the same performance... or a mix of the two. You could throw two cards in dual-GPU config for similar power to one you had two years back, and still not have to worry too much if CrossFire or SLi doesn't work properly (well, if you forget the microstuttering, of course).Reply

WHy is the 6770 left out of benchmarks?? Isnt that odd considering the 7770 replaces the 6770? I really wish reviewers would be independant when reviewing cards, instead of following manufacturer guidelines.Reply

No, since the 6770 is EXACTLY the same card as the 5770 (just relabeled). So it makes sense to continue using the 5770 and remind AMD (and us) that we do not fall for their shenanigans (sadly, many do fall for it). Reply

For your 6850. It should sell a lot better now. Maybe they really stopped producing it and need to get rid of stocks. But when it's sold out almost anyone should go for a gtx 560, 7% more expensive and 30% faster.The only reason to buy a 7770 now is if your powersupply can't support it and you would have to get a new one.Reply

by the time the 6850 is out of stock the 78xx series are launched which will knock out 560

don't understand what evryone is complaining about, its faster then the 57xx-67xx series, les spower. sure it's not cheap but neither are the 57-67 @ launch. Combined with old gen available and NV products a bit to expensive but this is just starting price....Reply

Moore's law apparently doesn't apply to graphic cards. People expectations do. People expect that every two years gpus at the same price point have double transistors and thus be faster by so. Obviously perf does not scale like so since the 28 nm shrink only has a 50% improvement from 40 nm. However that would mean a 50% improvement is expected. Imperfect scaling would mean a 40% improvement.

So people expect that a card which is 20% faster than a card from 2 years ago to be 1.2/1.4 the price at launch, or an ~ 85% of the 5770 launch price in this case. That would mean that the card should retail at around $130-140 or so for the 7750 and sub-$100 pricing, like $90 or so. I expect it to be that price too. Reply

Moore's Law does actually hold true for GPUs in the direct context of the original law as you stated, roughly doubled transistors every 2 years with a new process node. The performance has deviated however for some time now with imperfect scaling relative to transistors, but at least ~50% has been the benchmark for performance improvements over previous generations.

Tahiti and the rest of Southern Islands itself isn't that much of a disappointment relative to Moore's Law, because it does offer 40-50% improvement over AMD's previous flagship GPU. The problem is, it only offers 15-25% improvement over the overall last-gen performance leader the GTX 580 but somewhat comically, AMD wants to price it in that light.

So we end up with this situation, the worst price performance metrics ever where a new GPU architecture and process node only offers 15-25% performance increase at the same price (actually 10% more in the 7970 case). This falls far short of the expectations of even low-end Moore's Law observer estimates that would expect to see at least +50% over the last-gen overall high-end in order to command that top pricing spot.Reply

I probably won't be enticed into a video card upgrade until the next generation of Microsoft and Sony consoles are out. In the land of console ports, even a 6770 can run nearly everything comfortably at most common monitor resolutions. Reply

I have an OCd C2D Wolfdale running the 4850 and I also agree that the 4850 will go down as one of the best bang for the buck cards ever.

My current i5/Z68 rig is running what I think will be considered another BBFTB card...the 6850...the dual fan Gigabyte 685OC in my case.

The 5770/6770/7770 are a fantastic line of mid-range cards...esp OCd but for a few $$ more an OCd 6850 still holds it's own quite well, there's no real counter for a 256bit vs 128bit memory bus. A big hats off tho to the 7770's high res numbers...pretty damn sweet, but I don't need uber res for a 23.5 inch monitor...ofc I'm not a hard core gamer either.Reply

7750 seems perfect for an HTPC. But to put it into context, IGPs should be using the 7750 as the benchmark for what to aim for. Can see this becoming completely obselete very soon once products based on Raspberry pi or Cu Box get released and match (the very impressive) picture quality of the 7750. In mean time get a low profile passive cooled version out and it will be perfect.

As for the 7770 I simply see no purpose for it at all. NVidia 560 is only marginally more expensive and beats it completely. 7770 seems to me to be a complete waste of stockReply

So the 7770 should be at $109, and that forces the 7750 down to $89 or less. The die sizes on these chips are a lot smaller than their competition so I dont see what AMD is thinking. Inflation? lol.Reply

Which begs a simple question that has been bothering me with Anandtech GPU reviews for a while: how come they don't measure the wattage for the cards rather the whole system. Ok, it needs a custom PCI-E riser board and a multimeter but other sites (like techpowerup.com or this French site (can't think of it ATM) where the place I first saw that method used) manage it.

Or at a minimum why is there no IGPU (Intel 3000) power usage in the review to act as a baseline?Reply

I'm kinda disappointed by the 77xx launch. I'd have hoped for some €150 - €200 cards, consequently performing better than the 6870. Maybe the 78xx will be better. I really hope nVidia comes around with good cards, that way the consumer won't get ripped off. Although I also hope that AMD makes some money in the mean time.Reply

I just want to reiterate how much I appreciate the games you've chosen for your benchmarks. It's a very diverse set of games and covers a lot of the non-FPS genres that other review sites tend to leave out.Reply

Yeah sure is price fixing when the always victorious gtx460 is $110 bucks and beats the 7770 every time and there's a large stock available...Or the other, triple fan GTX580 at the egg for $359, and the other reduced way down from $500.AMD is scalping we customers even now and has been since before this review.Reply

There's an easy solution to price fixing: Don't buy at their asking price, or buy the faster, last-gen for cheaper.

Its not like GPUs go bad like produce or get consumed like oil. Just keep using whatever you have in your rig now, because chances are its just as fast at a cheaper price than what AMD is asking for these "new" next-gen parts.Reply

I guess AMD is gonna let go of the old 6850 quick, 'cause no one is gonna buy it with this prices. Perf/watt very good tho, although mem bandwith very dissapointing. DDR4 is not coming soon enough, let alone GDDR6. 128 bits are simply not enough and 256 bits is adding more power/complexity. Can't wait for the day when GDDR6 comes and hopefully doubles bandwith for lower power/efficient clock speed. Oh, and gpu companies, when that day comes, don't be stingy like you always are and end up giving us 64 bits instead. Reply

This is figuring out the price per performance, how many dollars you have to spend to get each FPS. Using Anandtech's Crysis: Warhead: 1680x1050 Gamer Quality Everything, Enthusiast Shaders+4xAA (Lower is better since you get a better bang for your buck.) Prices are from Newegg, using the cheapest card out there, no MIR are factored in, price includes shipping. Notes the 7750 and 7770 are not on newegg yet, so I am using the MSRP with no shipping to figure out the FPS per dollar. The GTX460 is using an older anandtech test since it is no longer using the more recent bench

As you can see, the Radeon 7750 is actually a very good card for its price. It beats the old Radeon 5770 series, and all the Geforce only losing to the Radeon 6800 series in the terms of value. Don't forget though the Radeon 7750 can be single slot, doesn't need a 6 pin, and generates less noise and heat.

The 7770 on the other hand is the most expensive card in the terms of value. Notice that Geforce cards have a higher dollar per fps (they have less value), for the Radeon card to succeed it only has to compete with Geforce since Radeon still makes money if you buy one of the other Radeon cards. If the 7770 was priced at 131.01 it would have identical value as the gtx460 1gb, and 142.78 if the card was priced against the value of the GTX550 TI.

I wouldn't be surprised that the Radeon 7770 will drop to the 139.99 or 149.99 price range once all the older 5700 series and 6800 series leave the channel. I do not think we are going to see much cheaper 7750s though since it is a recycled part and its price per performance is very good already. OEMs are going to be eating up the 7750s like candy.Reply

Bingo. But your numbers look at if you were to want to buy today. You might have bought the 5750 or 5770 at a significantly lower cost during a sale in the past 2.5 years. So individual price comparisons may be different than today's prices.

IN ADDITION: the 7770 and 7750 require about 3% less power and produce frame rates about 10% higher than their 57xx counterparts. This is after the 57xx have been out for nearly TWO AND HALF YEARS. I purchased both (the 5750 for one system at $65 and the 5770 for another at $99) about 6 months after introduction. Two years later, there is no compelling reason for me to upgrade. That means AMD is only going to be selling these to new desktop purchasers.... a quickly shrinking market. This cannot be good for AMD. Reply

Since fps is your only metric, itself being a murky and disturbed error filled easily biased mess based upon game set, driver cheating, resolutions, and in game settings chosen, the entire price/perf chart is EPIC FAIL. When your drivers crash, when your game doesn't work, when new games don't work for weeks and months, when dual card drivers are absent, when features like PhysX are no can do - NONE OF IT IS ACCOUNTED FOR....--- Obviously all amd has to do is follow the simpleton idiot fps/per dollar formula for all the stuck cursor gsod fanboys to bloviate and screech they saved 20 cents... then the amd forum masters casn continue to lock them out, lock user problem threads, and smart off that "it's works for them on their eyefinity setup theya re starig at right now"...---When a crazed, worship filled, religious zealoutry claims the heavens have opened on the cheap and the devil competition has lost all, beware...Oh.. wait... sorry talking to the wrong person...Reply

Yes, it does. With full bitstreaming options too (even WMA Pro). 7.1 channel LPCM support is also there. No worries. (Of course, hot plugging [ say, moving from a direct monitor connection to an AV receiver input ] causes the audio output to act crazy, but that is the case with every card. Reboot fixes the issue)Reply

This really drives home how obsolete my GTX 285 is. The 7770 has about equivalent performance and uses *130 watts* less.

I need a new video card, but I want to see what Nvidia has for us next - I'm not a fanboy (in spite of all my gaming cards since the 3dfx Voodoo 3 being Nvidia), I'm just genuinely hoping for either some competition to drive prices down or something better to blow us away. Come on guys, get a move on already!Reply

I really don't understand what AMD is thinking here. The 7770 is preposterous at this performance/price level, and it boggles the mind that they designed it this way. I'm really stumped here, it's like they're spitting in all of our faces to release a card that has less performance and costs more than a widely available 2 year old part.

They must take us for fools. Nothing else could explain this. Technology is supposed to improve as the years go by, not tread water, and certainly not get worse. You see this kind of bs and the revolving door of talent at AMD starts to make more sense. There must be some real pieces of work running that place.

It's obvious isn't it ? They are a collapsing wreck that have culled with the ax their dwindling workforce as they've sold off assets to leave them with nothing but ip.Now after striking away Bain Capital style at the failing red bottom line - in the deep debt for endless years under the tightwad whining fan base and OCD focused complaint review sites meshing pennies and fps to an insane nuovo art form that should embarrass it's fans rather than fill them with false self esteem and self congratulating "I'm brilliant" mirror apprasials, they must further the save their life goal and actually ask their tenderly coddled and deceived rabid fan base to cough up some survival dollars... Unfortunately, the years of low price bragging filled with lies albeit effectiveness as an ignorant fool lives in bliss, has come to backfire on them at the worst time possible, the end of the line. As Mr. Smith said, it was inevitable. Now amd needs a hero to save it's collapse and absorption into the wider market matrix.Reply

I have a gts250 and I get about the same fps as the 7750. I paid just over 100 bucks (109 IIRC) for it and its almost 3 years old and keeps up with these brand new cards. I cant decide if that's funny or sad. Reply

While these cards definitely deserve flak for their starting prices, I'm not nearly as disappointed overall as many here seem to be. I have no doubt that their prices will come down in time. Consider that the 7750 is the absolute slowest GCN card. I fully expect to see a tastey sub-$90 price for the 7750s by the time Nvidia gets their 28nm line out. The 28nm process is still extremely supply constrained; it wouldn't make sense to price the cards out any lower to increase sales when there simply aren't any to sell. Whether Kepler trounces GCN or equals it, its introduction will be when the real shift in the price/performance shift occurs, both from competitive pricing as well as the 28nm ramp up.Reply

I think it's safe to say that ever since the release of bulldozer, AMD has been hit hard financially. They spent a lot of R&D and probably put all their eggs in one basket in that project. As much as their efforts can be admired, it seems that this has taken so much of AMD R&D money that now they don't have much to offer for even their gpu lineup.

I understand that there is little competition and that this is the 'first gen' of 28nm cards, but there should seriously be at least 10-15% performance boost for the whole lineup. Going from 40nm to a 28nm process is a big jump. The 'there is little competition' so these cards are priced this way is still unacceptable. I'm starting to be wary of the 7800 series cards as I'm looking forward to buying a card no more than the low $300 range.

Hopefully Nvidia has something up their sleeves and can give us true 28nm performance we should be seeing. I am in no way an nvidia fanboy as I have had both ati and nvidia cards. The only thing i worry for nvidia's kepler cards is the power consumption. However, if the performance gain more than makes up for the minor increases in power consumption, then it will be more than worth it. Reply

Yes they are price gouging for the next 3 months because they can. Also the 7700 series is complete shit performance wise and will only find its home in the hands of the uninformed and the low power systems built by Dell and HP.

Nvidia is the only hope of seeing a good price/performance boost now.Reply

No it wouldn't actually, since with the move to 28nm you should be seeing a performance increase per dollar not the same. The performance of a 6850 should be around $79 this generation, with the $160 cards offering almost 6950/560ti level of performance.

This is what Nvidia will most probably be offering with their next gen parts, and what AMD will have to lower their costs to if they expect anyone outside of the fanboys to but them.Reply

Soemthing went very wrong during your Skyrim testing. I ran a 6870 in a similar rig (X4 955 @ 3.5ghz, 4gb ram, no ssd) @ 1920x1080 with 4x AA / 16x AF and A LOT of texture mods and my fps was MUCH higher than that. Not only that, but this was before the big performance boost in patch 1.4 / before I had even heard of SkyBoost!

Admittedly my card was overclocked a good chunk (955 core / small mem oc) and my cpu had 600mhz on yours but no way that accounts for some massive 35+ fps difference especially when you guys have the performance patch and no mods.Reply

I think what everyone is missing here is that neither the 7750 or 7700 is really a card for builders, but for the OEM system builders, local shops, etc. For that segment, these cards are fastastic. Just look at the power and thermal loads - if you're HP, now you know you can sell the end customer a 7750 "HD Video" build for cheap, or a push the upgrade to 7770 based "HD Gaming" system without changing the power supply or cooling! That's huge for those guys. Simplification of the assembly line, part variety, etc etc. Same thing with Dad at home. Kid wants to play Battlefield? Buck at the shop around the corner knows that 7770 will get him there and then some playing on their "old" 1080p monitor without worrying that he'll see them back in 4 months when the system melts.Reply

I think it's best to wait for kepler. There's really no point to be an early adopter of ati's 28nm cards. I'm sure the price will be fixed as the way it should comparable to nvidia's offerings. I just hope that nvidia is really taking the time to actually make quality gpus that are fairly mature. I wonder when there will be stable, legitimate drivers for ATI's 28nm cards. Hopefully that will give a decent boost in performance. Reply

Well this seems to be the trend. Older cards allways seems to better in bang for the buck department.It has been very slow time in GPU selling, so there are a lot of those old 5xx and 6xxx cards, so they have to sell those out before they can recure the prices for these new... Or nobody would buy those older allready produced cards. It is pity to us consumers, but a must to GPU manufacturers.At this moment there is allmot none reason for AMD to make old 6xxx series cheaper, because the Nvidia is not making enough pressure. So they release new cards at extreme prices and sell those old card first.Reply

I have been looking for an upgrade for my 4850 512MB card with a similar great bang for the buck that this card has given me all these years. Guess I'm still going to be looking. 7770 is close, but not enough of a leap to be honest. And while I'm sure the 78xx series will be great, I'm guessing it will be at a $250-$299 price range which is far beyond what I would ever consider spending on a video card. Sigh.Reply

But, you also have to take some things into consideration. Some of the performance difference is likely due to the 6800 cards having a 256bit memory bus, as opposed to 128bit. Even with that standing I'm amazed the 7770 gets as close as it does. The main reason the 7770 is more expensive, I'm thinking is more likely so they can cease production on the 6800 series and dump inventory. The 68xx cards have been out for a while, and have benefited from many driver optimizations, but, you're not likely to see any more performance out of them from driver updates than what they already have. The 77xx cards are still based on a new core, which through driver updates will likely get much better performance over time.

Bottom line for me though, is, does it perform better than the 5770 that I currently have. Which, it does so considerably. More than could be said for the 6770. It also makes me wonder if they aren't gonna end up doing a 7790, basically a cut down pitcairn with a 256bit bus, like they did with the 6790. Reply

actually the 7850 is the real star here. a board that does not require pci-e power and is able to almost match the 5770 in performance on most of the games. that was a 100w card.

in the other hand, this makes me a little worried about the power requirements of 7800 series. i am hoping that both 7850 and 7870 will require only 1 pci-e power plug. my case is not big enough to handle more heat than that, and this is why i dont upgrade to a GTX560 (2x power connectors).Reply

I think for the 7850 there is a possibility it would only have 1 power connector.The expectation is that Pitcairn is roughly "2xCape Verde", which means it should have roughly twice the power draw too. Twice the 7750 power draw is easily under 150W, whereas twice the 7770 power draw is not (well close actually according to measurements, but clearly these cards want to allow powertune +20% settings and overclocking).That would be similar to HD6850/HD6870 where the 6850 only has one pcie power connector but the 6870 has two.Reply

Will there be any testing on Cape Verde's Crossfire scalability in the near future? I'm really interested to see if dual 7750s can fill the gap between it and the 6950. Unlocking a hidden, low power 6900 variant, the missing 6930, without having to match and compare more than three SKUs sounds too good to be true.Reply

power, and cementing its position as the replacement for the 6670 there isn’t a CrossFire connector on the card

Can't believe I missed... anyways, thanks for that.

I found a preliminary benchmark with dual 7770s. Numbers look great so far, but at $318 for two, I'll be waiting until I can have both for less than $279. One now @MSRP, the second discounted once Kepler is out.Reply

That isn't true. 7750 don't have a crossfire connector but they can do crossfire just fine, by transferring the data over the pcie bus.According to techpowerup benchmarks which tested that there's not even really a performance hit due to that (though they used a board with 2x16 pcie lanes, albeit only pcie 2.0, so should be similar to ivy bridge lga1155 which will have 2x8 pcie 3.0, and it might be worse on sandy bridge lga1155 which only has 2x8 pcie 2.0), though they say there were some stability issues, which certainly are driver fixable.I usually question the viability of low-end CF setups however, I think you'd be far better off with one HD7800 card instead (you shouldn't need to wait that long for it after all).Reply

Nvidia is as much to blame for the lack of shift in the price/performance curve as AMD. That's just the nature of competition. If you look at the 7770 and 7750 pricing compared to what Nvidia currently has available, it falls right in line. AMD doesn't care that you buy a 7770 or a 6850; with the former they'll make a nice margin, with the latter it'll help clear out the channel. They only care that you buy one of their products, and their products are priced just fine to that end. With only 123 mm2 die size (it's quite tiny), the 77** cards have a lot of room to get cheaper when Kepler is released. And I hope Kepler is REALLY good, because that's when we'll see the true price/performance shift.Reply

How so? Nvidia is not the one pricing their next-gen parts based on last-gen performance and pricing, AMD is. If Nvidia does that with Kepler, then you they share in equal blame. But AMD had the chance to fire the first salvo this generation and they whiffed, badly, on all 3 volleys now (7970, 7950 and now 7770).Reply

And that's exactly the problem! They're pricing new 28nm next-gen parts based on old 40nm last-gen price and performance levels. Nvidia's pricing was justified 14 months ago because the performance was there. It would not be satisfactory if they came out with a "new" part tomorrow and priced it the same as their old parts, would it?

Blame lies squarely on AMD for this because they set the pricing on their parts and they were first to market. Look at it historically over the last 2-3 major generations, never once has Nvidia done this with a new architecture (not refresh) in terms of moving the performance bar so little while expecting the same top of the line premium pricing.Reply

Ok, Anand continues to amaze.. he/they are either dumber than a box of rocks or intentionally biased against AMD and simply looking for any excuse to skewer them. Personally i lean towards option number 1.

The author of this review has completely buffooned the entire thing by getting the basic workings of AMD numbering & performance scaling WRONG.

yes the naming convention changed. but not in the way anand seems to think. This should be no brainier information for a site like this.

Top 7900 next 7800 next 7700 next 7500 next 7400 and so on.

The 6000 series was identical

Top 6800 next 6800 next 6700 next 6500 next 6400 and so on

the older models were different.

IF you want to compare apples to apples you compare the 6700 series to this series. The 6800 series is an entire tier above this card and should outperform it.

This site needs to get its crap together because nearly every other tech site makes this one look foolish, because they are foolish. or fire this reviewer and the editor and get some people who know what the hell they are talking about.Reply

this is all nice but sorry, I got burned waaaaaay to many times by AMD BS to even care! having to wait for months for proper support, faulty drivers and mind bogglingly piss poor performance per dollar in the latest games = never again going to buy or recommend any sort of AMD graphic solution. Im going to wait for the next gen consoles to launch, and then im going to get the absolutley cheapest and most efficient nvidia solution that offers me twice the performance of whatever m$, sony chooses to put inside their lil crappy casual boxes. Just like i Always DO, but his time AMD is out of the peculation for good! se ya.Reply

The only source of this is a slideshow from AMD regarding the launch of Barts GPUs.

And then AMD launched Bulldozer with a slideshow saying that it has 2B trannies. A few months after launch, AMD admitted that it was an error, saying that it has only 1.2B trannies.

I've done such an extensive performance analysis to conclude that all Barts-based GPUs (6870, 6850, and 6790) are VLIW4-based just like its Cayman cousins.

GCN appears to be around 10% more efficient than VLIW4 for games overall, but it's very hard to say exactly how much. If a 78xx card that comes out next month has very similar specs to a VLIW4-based card (heck, or a VLIW5-based one), it'd be much easier to say. Still researching on this...Reply

Man it's just amazing..." And then AMD launched Bulldozer with a slideshow saying that it has 2B trannies. A few months after launch, AMD admitted that it was an error, saying that it has only 1.2B trannies. "I see that now..." Update: AMD originally told us Bulldozer was a 2B transistor chip. It has since told us that the 8C Bulldozer is actually 1.2B transistors. The die size is still accurate at 315mm2. "http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-r...

Ok, there's just no way this core transistor miscount is a mistake. The level of incompetence requried for that to be a mistake and not a PR plot is staggering.

For that reason BoFox I don't doubt what you are saying about Barts 68xx's and 6790...

I'd sure love to see that exposed far and wide as well if true. It's just amazing to me, a staggering "error" on the most basic bulldozer spec... and we're supposed to just pretend it never happened and no explanation is ever given.

Yes there's a chance you are correct Bofox on your calculations, certainly cannot put it past amd given the track record.Reply

From the consumer's point of view, the 7750 is the best card which doesn't require external power connector and hence can fit in with standard case and SMPS. The 7770 makes sense for those who crossfire, esp with long idle and compares favourably against the 6950/6970, esp for somebody who plans to buy only 1 7770 now and another one later when a better deal is available

From AMD's point of view, the 7750 seems to be targeted at the 80% of the Market who buy Intel PC, but are envious of the graphics capabilities of the puny Llano and even tinier Brazos. The 7770 seems to be targeted at the same folks for whom the BD was targeted. If somebody was prepared to buy a product(BD/7770) which is priced closer to competition(Core-i5/Gtx560) but gets beaten in all benchmarks and is priced more than old generation(PhenomII/6850) but still loses to it in many benchmarks. In short the 7770 is a Bulldozeresque disaster.

The situation would have been much better, if they had marketed these cards as 7670 and 7750, because that is were they belong based on die/transistor size and performance. Definitely a slip-up from AMD graphics Marketing dept.Reply

LoL rarson, let's not get into that kind of argument with chizow, you'll end up in WW2 history of tanks pricing failure due to the fact they were not double the raw power of last gen tanks from x company vs y company... history, history, history...

Be careful with Chizow's arguments, he lives in the past, nothing new to reading his comments, it's already in the books and ready for anyone that reads it to perceive it the way they want(different from an ATI or Nvidia fanboy point of view)... :PReply

There's a reason we look at the past, because chances are, what's already in your rig performs the same or better than what AMD is trying to sell you at the same or higher price than what you paid "in the past".

Everyone needs to set the bar for themselves in terms of what they are willing to pay for an "upgrade", and given there is negative scaling with these parts, its pretty obvious they fail on all fronts. But hey, even you acknowledge this.Reply

Those with a choosen side should not try to explain whatever the history tells us because they have a biased opinion. They can't see both side of the medal as objectively possible as someone with an impartial view and form the beginning you've proven to be on nvidia's side.

End of the discussion, you can try to explain history but it's YOUR perception. I never said history wasn't worthy of anything the thing is you always are on the same side which means it's worthless from the very beginning.Reply

I do not think it's a TOTAL fail, the 7970 and 7950 isn'T very well priced, but it's not a fail like those. From your point of view a fail is from historical pricing. From my point of view and ALWAYS was like that, it's from a performance/price standpoint and I won't change because you tell me we should look at everything things from the past. Sure we can learn from it.

There was once a man that beleived the earth was round. But the historians and everyone else beleive it was flat so they killed him. No need to put names in there... History used as an argument makes that sometimes.... You've got to renew your point of view else, you can't see further from what you know.

AMD is trying to sell you at the same or higher price than what you paid "in the past".

Like we said before, nothing new here, it's always the same with x2 parts from last gen for years now... And it's only an example from many others of rebranding older designs selling at higher price point which AMD and Nvidia are both strong at.Reply

The price is a failure from my perception, 7770 and 7750 is a big fail..... Unlike 7950 and 7970 non-attractive price/performance but still a little justified by it's performance compared to parts that are out NOW and not compared to freaking history of pricing or future video cards...

People out there will buy the 7770 and they'll be totally satisfied for as long as they'll own the thing. If you spent 4 hours on the internet looking at video card prices and benchmarks and realize you're way better off with a 6850 you might find it a bargain. But for others, if you tell them what you did to get to that conclusion, they'll maybe end up being happy with their choice without searching because they had 4 hours of playtime outside on a sunny day and that's worth it, while you're on the computer looking to spend your money on the best you can find.

So in the end, whatever we might say, perception is the key in life, we can take a whole day speaking about that and in the end, everyone will be right, because each of us create it's reality by thinking and seeing it the way THEY want... You want to live in the past and the future analyzing everything, you'll end up loosing the present which is the only thing that exists...Reply